The association of Chopin
and dance seems almost an inevitable and aesthetically creative combination. A predominant
proportion of his compositions are dance music or at the very least contain embedded
Polish dances - waltzes, mazurkas, regional dances and polonaises.

I have noted two general ways that I feel pianists approach these piano pieces. One may approach them as if composed in the glow of romantic nostalgia for the missing past joys of the dance. The great Russian pianist Dimitri Alexeev brings this warm affection especially to the Mazurkas. Chopin certainly experienced this yearning emotion after he left Warsaw where he was known to be a passionate dancer as a young man. The other general approach concentrates, it seems to me, more on a recreation through the filter of time, the folkloric and rural elements, the lively rhythm and 'snap' of many mazurkas, the sometimes strange countrified harmonic relations he explores so creatively. Chopin would have experienced at first hand the rather energetic, even rough, folk dancing in Mazovia. These reflections were uppermost in my mind as I approached the majestic columned entrance of the Polish National Opera Theatre in Warsaw.

Orchestrations of Chopin
piano pieces have been popular with many composers (even Benjamin Britten), but
this is the first time that his two youthful piano concertos have been
conceived as a ballet by two eminent choreographers (one English and one Polish). One
might ask why these exuberant works of the young Chopin have not been
considered before. Chopin in his youth was mad about dancing, a fine dancer himself
and also an excellent dance pianist, often playing into the small hours. Party
exhaustion even required a period of rehab recommended by his teacher Józef
Elsner at Bad Reinherz in Silesia – now the Polish spa town of Dusznki Zdrój.

Perhaps it is the length of
the concertos and lack of narrative element that has dissuaded choreographers.
Of course we are all familiar with Les
Sylphides, a short, non-narrative ballet
blanc. Michel Fokine was the original choreography, Chopin's music orchestrated
by Alexander Glazunov. In 1892 Glazunov had already arranged an orchestral
suite of Chopin entitled Chopiniana
his Op. 46.The American
choreographer John Neumeir's Lady of the
Camellias which I greatly enjoyed in Warsaw, also comes to mind.In this year celebrating the 100th
anniversary of the regaining of the Independence of Poland, the idea of a
ballet setting of the concertos seemed an inspired one.

Nasz Chopin Polish National Ballet

Liam Scarlett is the
artist in residenceat the Royal Ballet
in London and artistic associate with Queensland Ballet in Australia. As a
young man he was fascinated by the choreographic possibilities of the piano and
attracted by the smaller piano works of Chopin. He had always loved the beauty
of the concertos but thought the difficulties of setting them as a ballet a particularly
significant challenge.

As an Englishman he did
not feel a need, or even the presumption, to tie the E Minor Concerto to Polish history. He felt it should be simply a
joyful, happy and free celebration of independence. In ballet one should
remember there is no language barrier, just human gesture that is universally
communicative of emotions. In an interview with Julia Hoczyk, Scarlett
mentioned he felt much of Chopin is musically breathed and phrased in a rather
different way compared to say the logical structure of Stravinsky in the Rite of Spring. This more abstract
'absolute music' presents unique challenges for a choreographer. He was
interested in expressing through the beauty of the dance, the pure emotions and
special qualities and characteristics of the later E minor concerto Op.11 that distinguishes it from the earlier and
shorter F Minor Op. 23.

The noble Allegro maestoso opening of the first
movement gives way to a lustrous cantabile of the most
refined feeling one could imagine. I felt the almost minimalist staging
with the dancers in the simplest of white costumes - females in diaphanous long
dresses transparent from the waist down, the male dancers in simple white
trousers and sheer white shirts - was visually and aesthetically finely balanced,
the large stage offering tremendous scope for movement. The choreography was subtle
and refined, perfectly in keeping with the youthful emotional landscape of this
concerto. Chopin was considered the 'Ariel of pianists' (the disembodied spirit
character in Shakespeare's The Tempest) and I felt the dancers
communicated this spirit of Nature most effectively.

Nasz Chopin - Yuka Ebihara and Patryk Walczak

The Romanze. Larghetto is
a ravishing love song with all the character of what might be considered a
Chopin 'nocturne'. Danced in this vein, I found it moving and affecting,
full of charm and refined passion. Perhaps the orchestral players occasionally struggled
with the musical compromises necessary to imbue it with a tempo that could be danced
but the music and dance breathed. The pianist Krzysztof
Jabłoński was highly poetic and emotionally moving in this movement.

Here was the true nature
of adolescent love, cloudless and illusioned before the tigers of
experience begin their feast. The breath of young idealistic love unsullied.

The Rondo. Vivace
was just that, a 'brilliant', lively and energetic krakowiak dance
but naturally not presented as a folkloric celebration but one full of joy, élan
and athletic exuberance on the part of the dance company, utilizing to the full
their formidable technical resources.

For me the performance
expressed a perfect understanding of what a musicologist might term
'the Chopin aesthetic'. In modern interpretations and pianism there seems
to be a movement to eclipse or at least diminish the
'feminine' aspect of the soul from Chopin. This is absurd and
impoverishing and comes from our current preoccupation with the physical and
crudely 'powerful' in life, the clichéd view of 'masculinity', the
'macho' male. Chopin was one of those rare individuals who managed
to balance his masculine and feminine natures - a quality ever
present in his music and somethingthe
choreographer Liam Scarlett seems to be profoundly aware of.

The pianist Krzysztof
Jabłoński , elevated above the orchestra on a thrust stage, gave a very fine
performance of this concerto, one of the finest I have heard from him. He
played with ease, authority and in perfect synchronization with the dancers
which would not have been particularly easy requiring stamina and in addition
concentration on these distracting external elements (as if the concerto itself
is not difficult enough!) in a work of this length. The style he adopted was
very much in the correct style brillante
of the day, fully embracing the climat de
Chopin. The conductor Grzegorz Nowak
and the Orchestra of the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera were similarly
well attuned to the dancers although I imagine they have not performed this
concerto all that often let alone with a ballet company.

INTERVAL

The rather different
danced interpretation of the F Minor
concerto by the renowned Polish choreographer Krzysztof Pastor is
fascinating to examine. In many ways his conception indicates the
characteristics of natural intellectualism and committed historicism that
invests much of Polish creative thinking. One is very conscious of the weight
of history living in Poland. Pastor felt the idea posed some less obvious
questions beyond music that concerned both patriotism and history. He even
employed the assistance and advice of a playwright (Daniel Przastek) as an
historical consultant to work on a realizable 'plot'. Again this unusual approach
was prompted by the absence of a narrative structure in the concerto. Its musically
fitful emotional nature had to be taken into account.

Nasz Chopin - Marco Esposito, Dawid Trzensimiech, Lorenzo Alberti

This ballet makes
references to Polish post-war history in an aesthetic, abstract way rather than
through the cold concrete nature of descriptive language as a book might.
Pastor is fascinated by the films of Andrzej Wajda such as Kanal, They Loved Life and A
Generation. This is clear from his seminal ballet And the Rain Will Pass... with music byGóreckiand his ballet Kurt Weill. The universal nature of the
music of Chopin attracted him to creating a ballet that might be eventually considered for inclusion in the permanent repertoire of the company. He wished to combine the abstract
with some sense of structure, so used the colour of the costumes to add a type
of visual narrative and interpretative scaffolding to the whole. The Scarlett
concerto was minimalist monochrome in dove grey and white. Here changes of
costume indicated historical evolution as the work progressed. White denoted
idealism or purity, a period of rebuilding the nation after devastations of
war. Red - a colour from the national flag as well as the colour of the socialists
and communists in period. Funereal black has obvious connotations for the
tragic history of Poland but especially 1956-1968. Finally the gold of the 1990s, a reference to
the consumer society intent on the golden calf at the expense of moral values.

Nasz Chopin Carlos Martin Perez

Concerning the collaborative
role of the playwright and man of the theatre Daniel Przastek, he asked him to
imagine an idea behind the music. Pastor wanted to avoid pure dance, the characteristic
of all other Chopin ballet settings. It must be remembered that suffering, that
ubiquitous and intense Polish emotion, has been alleviated in many individuals by
periods of happiness, love, hope, joy and humour. He wanted to express these
various conflicting moods and emotions through the choreography and especially in
the varied lighting patterns of the white canvas stage. There are also elements
of improvisation in Pastor's characteristic mélange of classical and modern
ballet styles of choreography.

Nasz Chopin Vladimir Yaroshenko and Pawel Koncewoj

In the Maestoso first
opening movement of this, the first concerto Chopin composed,the balletic expression swayed correctly
between classical detachment and romantic enthusiasm. The main theme of the
exposition in the rhythm of a Mazur
was well preserved and the development was a flurry of activity. The style
brilliant came off spectacularly well with the pianist Krzysztof
Jabłoński. Hints of the Larghetto were subtly expressed in a
touching cantabile.

The Larghetto itself,
'indescribably beautiful', avoided any sort of cloying sentimentality in the
danced interpretation. Strength was supplanted or even augmented by visual poetry.
So many levels of expression were present here. The explosions of emotion in
the Chopin directions con forza and appassionato were utterly
appropriately danced, presenting in gesture the expressive doubts and slightly
angry emotions of adolescent or young love, so full of hope and illusions. The
emotional agitation that is embedded within the movement was approached with a
strong response perhaps expressing Chopin’s frustration with the unrequited
nature of his silent admiration of the soprano Konstancja Gładkowska. The
controlled pianissimo final note, as the apotheosis of the
structure, was beautifully communicated by the dancers.

The Allegro
vivace has its first theme marked semplice ma
graziosamente followed by a sudden rush of temperament and slight accelerando which
give an urgency to the music, eloquently expressed in the dance movements. Some
bucolic merry-making of the jolly tavern type but never crude is coupled with
that lovely and inspirational col legno pizzicato-like sound on
the strings. We danced along delightfully towards the notorious natural horn
call and the scintillating coda closing the work with a smile of pleasure. The movement revealed
the orchestra in musical control under their conductor Grzegorz Nowak. The finely
graded crescendos and decrescendos of the pianist Jabłoński was mixed
with the youthful joy of Chopin exercising his compositional and melodic virtuosity
to its utmost. The expressive choreography had become by now a type of eloquent
sound painting with all the costume colour changes. The exuberant dance of
the kujawiak provenance was wonderful in its physical energy,
exhilaration and high spirits.

Both ballets have given us
such a marvelous outpouring of the optimistic young but essentially Polish
Chopin – the dancer, pianist, actor, mimic, writer, practical joker and
humorist – as well as composer of genius. At the conclusion, the new ballet Nasz Chopin danced all the way to the
final overflowing joyful chords of this concerto, the expression of Chopin’s
first love.

A chance to 'discover' another work by the once famous Polish composer,
Aleksander Tansman (1897-1986), once considered as important as Szymanowski. The
magnificent violin concerto we heard earlier in the festival cemented him in my
mind as an outstanding composer inexplicably rather overlooked in the West at
least by popular opinion. The cultural iron curtain perhaps operating as a psychological
and prejudicial barrier once again. Tansman was a distinguished Polish composer
born in Łódz and a virtuoso pianist. After further studies in Warsaw he moved
to Paris where his less than conservative composing style was appreciated by Stravinsky
and Ravel. He also had a highly successful concert career as a pi…

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11CHOPIN'S MANOR 8.00 PMPiano RecitalSERGEI BABAYANThis distinguished musician and pianist requires little introduction. He has appeared at the most famous international music festivals with all the great orchestras of the world under the most renowned conductors, at the finest music venues as well as having been awarded most of the glittering prizes. For me his most outstanding claim to fame is his close relationship with the composer and pianist Daniil Trifonov as teacher, guide, philosopher and friend.

I was unfortunately unable to attend this recital and recordings of it are unavailable.SATURDAY, AUGUST 11 CHOPIN’S MANOR 4:00 PM Piano recital ERIC LU For
such a young man Eric Lu has achieved great things which …

Initially I think it interesting and instructive to briefly examine the rather exotic Polish-Turkish relations of the past. You may have already read this on a previous post but it remains extremely relevant and you may have already come across it.

Over the centuries this fascinating and involved subject has had a profound influence on Polish history. This was especially true in the 17th century at the spectacular Siege and subsequent Battle of Vienna (12th September 1683) that witnessed the victory of the Polish Husaria or Winged Cavalry under the command of King Jan Sobieski over the vastly superior military forces of the Ottoman Empire under the Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha. Historic relations between the two countries were initiated around 1414 with a Polish mission to the Ottoman Empire. Many wars followed over territorial claims in the Back Sea region. This was balanced in a way by supportive collaboration against the Habsburgs and the emerging Grand Duchy of Musco…

Australian author and classical musician.
He seriously studied the piano and harpsichord in London for many years.
His piano teacher was Eileen Ralf, a former professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the inspiring teacher of the great Australian pianist Geoffrey Tozer.
His harpsichord teacher was Maria Boxall, editor of the keyboard works of the English Baroque composer and organist John Blow as well as a renowned Harpsichord Method.
He yearns for the South Pacific islands but through a number of unlikely events and coincidences beached up on the cold shores of the Baltic.